Tuesday 11 November 2008

Layout 3 - It's all in the Pose!

Well technically it's actually now Wednesday so don't expect a post from me 'tomorrow'! It's now after midnight & another late-nighter for me on Blogger, etc so I need to do some damage control tomorrow. Think dh & I need to meet up after work for a date night. Poor man is most long-suffering but has really been neglected of late...Well, these photos have taken FOREVER to upload, but the upside is the notice-board right next to my desk is now spik & span! Yup, still got the tidying bug...Well, what am I 'sposed to do while I'm waiting 6-10 minutes per photo, huh?! Tried Cathy's idea (she very kindly gave me B.A.S.I.C. instructions on how to load up to 5 photos at a time) & the penny finally dropped in my computer-challenged brain. Was SO excited to put my new-found 'skill' into practise but, alas, Blogger refused. Just WOULD NOT do it...I gave up waiting, I mean really, how long do you girl's give it?! Can I at least minimise it & multi-task on Outlook Express at the same time? You don't expect me to just SIT here do you?!

Anyway, back to the notice board...It is no longer triple-layered full of by-gone events (dating back to July I might add...) so we can all actually see what's currently 'going-on' at long-last, so I 'spose I should actually say "thank-you" Blogger...seriously tho', I wanna upload photos with every post so please let me know if what I am experiencing is normal. I went to visit Blogger Help and found some gobbledeegook about Picasa Web Albums (used for our images?) only having 1 GIG storage space & there being an option of purchasing more 'storage'. Have any of you done that? I would have no idea of what's the best deal for me at this stage & prices go up to USD 500 per year, which in African language is a trillion gazillion South African Rands (I won't even bother giving you the Zimbabwe dollar equivalent!!!)so I need to get it right...HELP!!!???

Don't understand why blogs are free anyway...maybe this Storage thing is where Google makes a bit of cash to recover all their research costs. After all Blogger is a wonderful resource centre if you ask me & I would whole-heartedly recommend anyone reading this post that does NOT have a blog to create one NOW. Just follow the links at the top of any Blogger Blog for step-by-step setup. You'll not regret it as it's a place to jot down all your thoughts & ideas even if no-one else ever reads it...To me the funnest part of blogging is the interactive aspect of it & I just love receiving comments, no matter how short, so if you haven't left one yet PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT, you'll make my day :D

Here are some photos of a recent layout I did called "It's all in the Pose", about my two teenagers. If you scroll down to the bottom you'll see what it looks like finished, then scroll back up to see how I got there...

The photo above shows the right-hand page of the double layout, featuring a nice big 5X7 close-up in Black & White. I used plain white Bazzill as my backing cardstock and inked it HEAVILY with lime-green to FUNK IT UP. I used a Making Memories Scalloped paper print above the line of regular-sized prints (4x6"jumbos) & doodled around it with a black koki-pen. The pen is quite thick so I did a little trick...I went over it all with a white fineliner pen in the centre of the thicker black line. Have done this a coupla times before now & I dig it, very Aboriginal!

Above, we have the left-hand page of the double layout, showing a close-up of the nyummy Making Memories Polka-dot jelly alphas & a close-up of the printed frame I used around the line of photos at the bottom. This was an offcut of Karen Foster paper, which is (sorry!) never my favourite brand, but the colours worked well with this layout as they were quite a bold mix of lime, red & pink & I figured you wouldn't see much of the print in a narrow frame anyway...

I mitred the frame-corners for a more professional look (SO easy, just mark with a pencil first & cut a diagonal line, you can do it!) Repeated the doodling with the white-on-black pen scenario, at the bottom of the page aswell (loops go all the way around & are not 'cut off' along the bottom as it looks in this picture-above-the last half centimetre of the layout has not printed, soz!) I honed in so you could read the hand-journalling but you need to look at the photo BELOW for the FIRST half of it! then back at the photo above...

Aah, here is a nice view of the bottom doodling...cute huh?! also inked the bottom heavily so it looked kinda naively painted within the doodle line. Forgot to say that I inked the frame quite heavily with my very dark-brown ink pad too. Find black just that little bit too harsh so use my dark brown inkpad A.L.O.T!

Go gently with the inkpad 'cos you can't press the "undo' arrow if you overdo it! I started boldly on the edges & got lighter & lighter as I came 'in' to the body of the page, giving a smoky kinda Disco look...sometimes I wish these two would go up in a puff of smoke! LOL

I printed a coupla the photos along the bottom in COLOUR just for a bit of interest, so the whole layout didn't look too monotonous. I was very happy with how it turned out & note:- I didn't use a single "embellishment" so was proud :D Like to save where I can so I can splurge on other pages when I need a statement flower-flourish or fancy title, etc...

So there you have it! A real "Focus on the Photos" layout. Was pretty happy with the funky close-up portrait shots I got. Think they say a lot in themselves so thought they were 'statement' enough therefore no need to go overboard on 'bits & pieces"...Goodnight!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I used to be with Blogger but changed to Wordpress so that I could email people who left comments. Did find I had problems uploading photos as well but we were only on dial up then but have since switched to Broadband which is heaps faster. I do use Picasa 3 to crop and edit my photos.

Anonymous said...

Every morning, I receive e mails from the work done the night before. 5 weeks ago, my dear wife didn't know the difference between a gig & a meg. Now look what she has achieved! I'm very proud of her....she's so talented not to mention creative. I don't see much of her these days (nights), but I have to say she's doing a wonderful blog job!! Well done my darling wife!! Keep up the fantastic work & all you scrappers out there: keep following Helen's blog. She's brilliant & inspirational!!

CathQuillScrap said...

You're making progress. Maybe another tip re your photo uploading is to reduce the file size. I find that having photos under 100k definately helps with the uploading time... but then there are days when everything is just tooooooooooooooo s-l-o-w!!!! My best option to reduce file size is to reduce pixel width or dpi (or both).